Large Mac
by Light My Crazy Diamond
Summary: #002. Large Mac. Starring: Ness, Mario, and Little Mac. When Ness insults his height one times too many, Little Mac turns to good ol' Doctor Mario's height-boosting totally-not-steroids Mushrooms to gain some vertical distance. Things get a little out of hand, however, forcing the super help of the hero the Smash Mansion does not deserve... And doesn't really need, either.
1. Large Mac 1

**#002. Large Mac**

Starring:  
Ness  
Mario  
Little Mac

* * *

As the prime hub for all that had to do with lifestyle and entertainment, the Western Wing was filled with restaurants of stunning variety that boasted the local flavors of their home franchises, from the arcane and alien dishes of Chozo Chow-Out to the delicious, earthly homecooking of Louie Louie's Notes. Representing the fast food craze in the heart of Bronx, New York, was LittleMacDonalds, which was a fairly popular choice among many of the Smashers, due to its quick service and juicy burgers. The partially-eponymous boxer himself could be seen behind the counter occasionally, working a job to get himself some extra Smash bucks.

Today was one of those days. It was nearing the end of the early breakfast traffic, and Mac breathed a final sigh of relief as he observed the thinning of the line before him. Truth be told, he would much rather be doing one of his hardcore training regiments that Doc Louis put him through – sets of three hundred push-ups, three hundred hanging sit-ups, hundred-fifty jumps, and a full ten minutes of shadow boxing. Listening to the three hundredth order of the classic Punch-Out! Burger, handling the three hundredth wad of bills and calculating the correct change, making his hundred-fiftieth trip to the fryer to collect the fries, all done within the packed constraint of ten minutes, more than rivaled the intensity of some of his lesser work-outs, without the added benefit of the encouragement that every second of pain transmuted to a valuable increment in his boxing ability.

The next customers walked up to the counter, and automatically Mac recited, "Hello, welcome to LittleMacDonalds. May I take your order –" He took a better look at the Smashers standing before him. "Oh shit. Not you guys!"

"Hi Macky," Ness grinned as he and Yoshi leaned forward on the counter. "How you feeling today?"

" _Fine_ , thanks. What would you like to order?" Mac replied in a building aggressive tone as he tried to open a drawer where he kept his earplugs, though this was a little hard to do with boxing gloves on.

"Oh, well…" Ness gave an impression of being torn between the conflicting choices of what to get for breakfast as he tapped his cheek with his finger, furrowing his brow while Yoshi failed to suppress a snicker. "You know, I was going to ask for a Big M –"

"Hold it!" comes a voice from nowhere, and time immediately stands still as the scene quickly becomes drained of all color. A different incarnation of Ness, fully-colored unlike the one frozen in mid-sentence, rises from below to the screen of your imagination that was conjuring the events occuring before this shocking fourth-wall breaking interruption. "Hate to interrupt," the interloping Ness says, "but looking at some of the terminologies used in the current state of the story, it won't surprise me if this idiot author is hit by a copyright infringement from a multi-billionaire company!" Ness shakes his head, takes out a pencil, and crosses out the 'Big' just a paragraph above and replaces it with a different word. "That's better," Ness says, standing back and admiring his handiwork. "And by Virginia Joyce's Law of Stupidly Consistent Yet Illogical Continuous Changes, that means that all possible lawsuit-inciting real-life product names will now be changed to their benign fanfiction equivalent." Ness pats himself proudly on the back, pockets his pencil, and then shouts: " _Resume story_!"

"– Lagre Mac, but –"

The scene freezes and becomes stripped of all color as Ness rises up for the second time, smile of confidence turned to sheepish grin. He takes the eraser end of his pencil and rubs at what he wrote. "Spelling mistake," he grins, writing the word correctly this time as the cloud of dusty pencil-markings clears away, "but hey, who doesn't make mistakes?" The word fixed, he retreats back into the undefined bottom of the screen from whence he came.

"– Large Mac, but… I'm not really sure if you're… _Big_ enough to serve me that."

"I'm the perfect size to serve just about anything, thanks. _What is your order_?" Mac stressed the last question as he finally got the drawer open. There it was, the little orange earplugs of soft silicone, but now the challenge came in trying to pick them up, which was a little hard to do with boxing gloves on.

"Hey, Yoshi," Ness said loudly as he ignored Mac, turning to his dinosaur friend. "You know what they call a Merry Meal in Onett? You know, the set meal they have for small, _little_ children?"

"They don't – _ahem_ – call it a Merry Meal?" Yoshi replied, trying his best not to let the giggles get the best of him.

"No man, we got the midget system. We wouldn't know what the fuck a Merry Meal is."

"Then what _do_ you call it?"

" _Oh my God_!" Little Mac cried, feeling the color rise to his face as he finally succeeded in picking up the earplugs. He was now trying desperately to force it into his ears in order to block out the answer he knew was coming, but this was a little hard to do with boxing gloves on.

There was a dramatic hush as Ness kept his silence for a second, savoring the tense moment. Then he answered, " _Le Little Mac_."

The reaction was immediate. Ness bent over with pure jubilation scrunching up his face, cackling triumphantly as he grabbed his stomach. Yoshi finally let the laughter out, pounding his fists madly against the counter. The whole restaurant had somehow managed to hear the exchange between Ness and Yoshi, and there were grins, giggles, and equally-hearty laughter as everyone took part in the shaming of Little Mac.

" _May I just take your fucking orders, please_?" Little Mac roared over the noise, throwing the earplugs down as he smashed his fists together to ease off some of the unbearably mounting frustration.

"Hey Yoshi," Ness managed to wheeze out as he steadied himself with a hand against the counter, once again turning a blind eye to the reddening cashier before him, "what's the smallest laptop in the world?"

"I don't –" There was a huge intake of breath as Yoshi gasped, filling his drained lungs with glorious oxygen. "I don't know. What is it?"

" _Little Mac_."

Howls and gales of laughter rang in what was apparently the smallest laptop in the world's ears as he felt his own pulse pound inside his skull. A bull-like rage turned his mouth into a gritting rectangle of teeth, his forehead a throbbing plane of fiery red, his eyes bulging, burning orbs that threatened to catch his furiously steeping eyebrows on fire. "One more time," he said through the clenched spaces between his teeth, "one more _fucking_ joke and I swear –"

"Hey, hey Yoshi," Ness gasped as he wiped a tear from his eye, "what – you know what pasta's best when you're only a little bit hungry?"

"Ha –" Yoshi took a slight breather, holding up a finger to ask Ness to give him a second. He gulped air, then whispered, "Spa – spaghetti?"

"Nah, just a _Little Mac 'n' cheese_."

" _You little shit_! _I'll punch that fucking smirk right off your face_!" Little Mac screamed, finally losing it as he pounced forth and grabbed Ness by his collar, his left fist reeled back to devastate Ness's face with an unrestrained punch that would make even Mike Tyson cry like a little bitch in jealousy, a feat that was not a little hard to do with boxing gloves on. Ness saw his life flash before his very eyes as they widened in terror, and then promptly closed them as Little Mac released, thousands of fibers of steeled muscles stretching and pulling as the fist hurled itself towards Ness's face –

" _Stop right there_ , _Mac_!"

The crowd immediately shifted their eyes from the brutality that was about to take place to the source of the voice. It seemed as though to possess a magical quality that forced all to obey its command, for Little Mac's fist stopped instantaneously, mere centimeters from smashing into Ness's face. The heckling youngster opened his eyes a tad before he closed them again quickly, frightened by the great big green sun of a fist that occupied his entire vision.

"What the hell do you think you're doin', Mac baby?" Doc Louis asked disapprovingly as he stepped out from the kitchen door behind the counter, slinging a rag over his shoulder. "What did I tell you about punching innocent civilians, huh?" Doc smacked Mac on his back, and the boxer let go of Ness, who fell to the floor, tried to get up weakly, and ended up falling into Yoshi's arms. Mac closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, the red in his face slowly dissipating as it returned to his normal, tanned color. He was just about to turn around and explain things when Doc Louis cut across him.

"Well, whatchoo waiting for, Mac baby? _Apologize_!"

"But Coach!" Mac complained as he pointed at Ness with his glove. "He – he was making fun of my height!"

"Was he now?" Doc shot a quick look at the feebly shaking Ness before snorting and turning back to Little Mac. "What's wrong with you, boy? Didn't you learn how to pay these things no mind when you were in the ring? I'm disappointed in you, Mac – lettin' the words of a thirteen-year old get to your head like that!"

"But Coach, you don't _understand_ – the things he _said_ –"

"You let them get to you like that, you never gonna win the championships and defend your title." He shook his head. "I apologize for Mac's behavior," he said gently to Ness as he leaned over and dropped a chocolate bar in his shaking hands. Ness took a look down at the bar. The act of kindness, as well as the continuous pats on the back from Yoshi, seemed to ward off some of his terror, and he muttered, "Th – thanks, Doc."

"Ya know, it ain't every day when you can rile up Mac baby like that," Doc said thoughtfully as he scratched his chin. "How 'bout you lay one of your jokes on me, eh? Whaddya say to Mac that mess him up so much?"

"Coach!" Mac began to whine again, but Doc put up a meaty hand as he looked at Ness expectantly. Ness looked at the hulking, former heavyweight champion, looked at the annoyed lightweight who dared him to utter another word with a hardened glare, and then looked to the inquisitive face of Doc Louis again, before looking down at his twiddling thumbs and muttering, "Well – I mean – what do you –"

"I can't hear you, Ness baby, speak up," Doc Louis said cheerfully as he took a bite out of another chocolate bar.

"What I said was," Ness said louder and clearer this time, training his eyes away from the increasingly angry Little Mac, "well, one thing I said was – what pasta do you eat when you're not that hungry?"

Doc scratched his chin again as he chewed slowly on his chocolate. "I dunno, spaghetti?"

"No, just a Little Mac 'n' cheese."

There was no reaction whatsoever from Doc Louis, and Mac felt great affection and increased respect gush through him as he looked at his coach happily. He never should have doubted him. Coach, who was always there for him; Coach, who always stood up for him; Coach, who never made malicious fun of his small stature. He was the only man in the world who he could trust, a man who understood him perfectly, a man who would never, no matter the circumstances, would ever think of betraying him by laughing at –

"BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" Doc Louis let out roaring tidal wave of a laugh as he bent over and slapped his knees. "BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" he roared again, his great sloping belly heaving along with his guffaws. Mac could only stare, speechless at the betrayal, while the rest of the crowd joined in the fun and laughed again; even the shaken Ness grinned visibly. Doc was at it for a full minute, leaning his entire body against the counter for support as he wiped the tears from his eyes. When he finally calmed down enough, he choked, "That – was the funniest – darndest – thing I've ever – heard –"

He caught sight of Little Mac and, not quite registering the horrified expression on his student's face, pointed at him and pffted, " _Little Mac 'n' cheese_!"

" _That's it_!" Little Mac screamed, the raging red back in full steam to his face as he stomped his way out from behind the counter. "That's it!" he bellowed again as he stomped to the exit of LittleMacDonalds. He turned around, addressing all the eyes that were now silently trained on him. He took a deep breath, and then shouted, "You just wait. _You all just wait_! Soon I'll be bigger than all of you – and none of you won't make fun of me no more for my height – _no more_ –"

His eyes bulged like a madman as he spouted these final words of deranged impossibilities, before he turned back around and ran out of sight.

A heavy silence hung in the air for a full thirty seconds.

"Oh – oh man," Yoshi finally broke the silence with a croaky mutter. He wore a concerned, worried frown on his face as he cleared his throat and spoke, slightly louder, "maybe – maybe we went a bit too far…"

"I wouldn't worry about it," Doc Louis said cheerfully as he slapped a hand on Yoshi's shoulder. "Mac baby's got a bit of a temper, but he never lets it get the better of him in the end. You mark my words." He threw his crumpled chocolate wrapper into a waste bin and turned to Ness. "You got any more jokes, kid?" he asked keenly as he took out a pen and a notepad from his pockets. "Haven't laughed so hard since Glass Joe knocked himself out in the preliminaries!"

"Yeah – yeah, I got a couple more," Ness said, finally loosening up from the earlier trauma of Little Mac's near-assault. He looked up at the former boxer's earnest face, frowned, and continued, "uh. Well. What do you give Little Mac when he's misbehaving?"

Doc Louis mulled over the answer for a few seconds before answering, "A smack on the head?"

"Close. A _Little Sm – Mac_."

The entire restaurant rumbled with collective laughter once again as Doc Louis, struggling to breathe, screamed in delight and scurried his pen over the pages of his personal jokebook.


	2. Large Mac 2

By then Little Mac was already on the ground floor of the Western Wing, courtesy of possessing the third fastest running speed in the entire game. He was barely out of breath as he wiped a single drop of sweat from the side of his temple. He stood right outside the Doctor's Office, a versatile, catch-all hospital and pharmacist for the Smashers to sort out whatever ailments they were suffering from. He raised a fist and brought it down, intending to rap at the door. Just as fist was about to knock on wood, the door swept inwards, and Mario received a face full of leather and was promptly blasted from the doorway.

"Shit!" Little Mac gasped, before running into the clinic to help Mario up to his feet. It seemed that what he considered to be a gentle knock clearly wasn't gentle enough. Mario, dazed, shook his head as Little Mac let him lean on his arms for support. "Sorry about that, Mario. You feeling OK?"

"Unnnghhh…" Mario's pupils darted within the white surface of his eyes before his vision stabilized and he was able to see the identity of the perpetrator. "I-a should have known it was you, Little Mac. What-a do you want?"

Hearing the cursed adjective associated with his name did a fine job in reminding Mac of the public shaming he had just endured, and the boxer felt the color return in a burst of heat to his face. He managed to keep his voice calm, however, as he said, "Doctor Mario, I need your help. You got anything that can help me grow taller?"

"Doctor?" Mario repeated with sudden nervousness, as his face, perfectly dry moments before, broke out into blustering streams of sweat. "A – I am not a _doctor_. I am a _plumber_." He pointed to his classic garb of overall and cap, emphasizing the outfit that was more fitting for the latter occupation than the former. Little Mac rolled his eyes, having completely forgotten about Mario's unique… _Tendencies_ , and with an irritated sigh, said, "Oh come on, Mario. Everyone knows that you –"

"A-BLAH BLAH BLAH I CAN'T A-HEAR YOU," Mario suddenly sang at the top of his voice, drowning out Little Mac's as he closed his eyes and rammed an index finger into each ear. He continued shouting until he peeked an eye open and saw that Little Mac was keeping his mouth shut in impatient defeat, whereupon he drew his fingers out of his ears and, his voice returned to normal, said out loud, "But I-a know of a friend who might-a be able to help you. One minute!" And with that he bounced back up and ran to a door at the back of the clinic, disappearing behind it in the instant he let himself go of Little Mac.

The boxer sighed and threw himself back onto a couch. Mario would be dressing into his doctor clothes, which was going to take a while. Juggling three different "secret" identities was apparently a thing ever since the days of _Melee_ , and Little Mac wondered, not for the first time, whether Mario truly believed that no one in the Smash Mansion knew that plumber, doctor, and superhero were all but one. Then he lost himself in gazing at the numerous posters that hung on the walls, posters that showed detailed anatomies of every single species of Smashers in the Mansion (including a vandalized copy of the typical Yoshi's, where a term pointing to his under-regions was crossed off and replaced by a rather childish writing that spelled "vagina"), or else posters that advertised daily health tips and life advice in Mario's failing efforts to reduce the number of patients. There were plaques, too, golden certificates that boasted of Mario's participation with Woohoo University in creating a readily-available cure to Bean Fever that did not require the rare and fabled Crabble Grass, or else showed their appreciation for Mario's participation in the esteemed Video Game Medical Society's 23rd Conference where they discussed whether the great health benefits from reverse-genetically engineering Metroids to specifically drain away parasitic energy at the expense of the Metroids' lives cancelled out any ethical implications. Behind Mario's formal-looking desk and high chair was his doctorate degree from the Mushroom Kingdom's most prestigious university, which, rather uncreatively, was named Mushroom Kingdom University, and was the most prestigious because it was the only one. Little Mac thought about how life would have been if he didn't drop out of high school and continued on the typical academic path from junior to senior to freshman in college, and was envisioning freely beating up any bully who happened to make fun of his height when the door burst open.

Out marched the long-awaited doctor, distinguished by his pristine-white uniform, the sheen of his head mirror, and the drooping necklace of a stethoscope hung around his collar. Little Mac could see that he had tried to comb his hair down, though the countless hours of stuffing his hair inside the limited capacity of his cap had caused it to puff up in a slight mess. Mario, or Doctor Mario as he shall now be called, swayed his head from right to left, cracking the joints of his neck, and took his seat behind the counter.

"Hello, Mac," he said in his adopted doctor tone, which was basically his regular cheerful tone mixed with a bit of formality. "A-Mario, who just-a left through the back door by the way, tells me that you have a problem."

"Yeah, and a big one," Little Mac retorted, oblivious to the delicious irony in his words as he drew back the chair and sat opposite the doctor. "I need something that can make me big, Mario. I'm sick of –"

"I am not-a Mario," the doctor interrupted, "I am a- _Doctor_ Mario. Ma – Mario is a friend! We may look the same, but-a we are two different people!"

He rubbed the back of his head with an open palm as he said this.

"OK, OK – _Doctor_ Mario, I need something to make me grow taller. I'm sick of being _Little_ Mac. People keep making fun of me for my height, and I can't do anything to them outside of a Smash battle with Coach around –"

"Well, why not-a get your revenge during a Smash battle then?"

"Everyone just jumps into the air or throws me off the stage," Little Mac pouted as he burned in everlasting spite at a certain video game designer's choice in perhaps keeping him a little _too_ true to his boxing roots.

"Mama mia, Little Mac! Well, I do have just the thing…"

"You do?!" Little Mac cried in a rush of hope as Doctor Mario rummaged through his drawers. A second later and his hand was back out, fingers closed around the classic red Mushroom that caused all who ate it to grow significantly in size.

"Oh yeah! _Of course_!" Little Mac's eyes shone with delight as Doctor Mario wiggled the Mushroom tantalizingly. "Yeah, that's exactly what I need, Mar – Doctor Mario! Thanks – you're the b –"

"A-hang on," Doctor Mario interrupted once again, frowning slightly at his patient's ecstatic face. "I can't-a just _give_ it to you."

Little Mac's face fell. "Why not?"

"I am a _Doctor_ , Mac. For me to prescribe this to you, you-a need to have an actual medical condition that-a requires you to take a supplementary drug. What-a kind of doctor just gives his medicine away when the patient shows-a no signs of medical concern?"

"But you eat Mushrooms all the time during your adventures to save Peach from Bowser –" Little Mac tried desperately.

"Excuse me, but I am-a _Doctor_ Mario," Doctor Mario re-asserted as he glared at Little Mac. "The person you're thinking of is-a _Mario_. We may look the same, but-a we are two different people!"

He rubbed the back of his head with an open palm as he said this.

"Yeah – but – OK, well, I'm little. That's a medical condition, right?!"

Doctor Mario shook his head. "Not-a little or medical enough," he replied, and it frustrated Little Mac to no end that the answer to all his problems was barely five inches from his face and yet kept miles from his reach, a distance that only a legitimate prescription could close. He was just about to ramble about the general knowledge of dwarfism that he happened to know about when an inspiration suddenly struck him.

He allowed the angered muscles of his face to relax and sag with sadness as he forced himself to look downcast.

"Well – the truth is, Doctor Mario, I actually do have a medical condition that requires the Mushroom," Little Mac said in what was nearly a whisper compared to the raised voices he was speaking in just moments before. His tone was that of a lugubrious sadness, whose exaggerated quality was lost on Doctor Mario as he looked inquisitively at the boxer. "What-a is it?"

"I'm not sure if I should tell you," Little Mac muttered as he refused to meet Doctor Mario's gaze, trying his fiercest to bring tears to his eyes. "Incredible doctor as you are, I'm not sure if you're good enough to fix this… _Condition_ that I have."

"What-a are you talking about? I'm the best doctor the Smash Mansion has-a ever had!" Doctor Mario cried out in outrage as he threw his chest out in hurt pride, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was the only doctor the Smash Mansion had ever had. "You tell me what-a your problem is, Mac. Doctor Mario is number one in a-fixing your body!"

"Well… If you really are as great as you claim… Surely you wouldn't mind if I give you a little quiz? Just a question that, if correctly answered, absolutely proves you're the best doctor to help me?"

"Give it to me!" Doctor Mario cried with near desperation as he shot up, back straight.

"OK." Little Mac paused dramatically, still keeping his head down, still muttering with feigned sadness as he pretended to think of a random, hard question that only the most qualified could answer. "OK, I think I got one. List me the symptoms of someone suffering from depression."

"A bleaker, a more a-helpless outlook on life," Doctor Mario replied immediately. "Loss of interest in-a almost any activity. Perpetual feelings of a-worthlessness and a-likening yourself to trash. Eating and sleeping too much or too little. A general lack of emotions in almost every situation." He leaned back on his chair triumphantly, crossing his arms over his chest as he observed that Little Mac had nothing to deny against this barrage of factual information. "Is-a that enough for you?"

"Yeah, that's perfect." Little Mac finally looked back up, and to Doctor Mario's horror, saw that they were misty with repressed tears. "I – I think I'm ready now, to tell you about my condition – my condi _tions_." He breathed in, slowly, shakily. "The truth is, Mar – Doctor Mario, that for some reason I don't know why –" Little Mac ignored the frantic rustling as Doctor Mario looked for a pen to write notes "– I've been adopting a bleaker, more helpless outlook on my life. I've lost interest in boxing altogether, and I've been bottling up perpetual feelings of worthlessness. I've likened myself to trash more than a few occasions, like when I took a photo of a garbage can, added several pink, glittery filters all over it, and posted it online saying it was a CUte pic of me. I'm sleeping too much and eating too little. And – well –" A single tear trickled down Little Mac's cheek as he swallowed air again "– I have a general lack of emotions in almost every situation, including this one." He brushed the tear away and sniffed loudly as he awaited the doctor's final diagnosis.

Doctor Mario put down his pen, slowly, dramatically, and rubbed his chin with his hand, slowly, dramatically, as he studied the notes he had written. Then he pushed his chair back, slowly, dramatically, and shuffled over, slowly, dramatically, to the high window in the left corner of the room, looking out into the snowy fields of the mansion. Then, pensive look still on his face, he turned around, slowly, dramatically, as he impaled Little Mac with a deathly serious stare. "Little Mac," he said, slowly, dramatically, as he took his hand away from his chin, slowly, dramatically, "I-a believe I have figured out what-a you are suffering from." He paused, cleared his throat, and said, slowly, dramatically, "You are suffering from-a _chronic depression_."

"Oh noooo!" Little Mac shrieked as he brought his gloved fists up to his face. "I have Chrom's depression and he's not even here! I know exactly why I'm depressed though – it's because everyone keeps saying I'm _little_! It's filled me with a great deal of self-loathing and the only solution is to make me bigger!"

"A-Worry not, Little Mac!" Doctor Mario cried as he rushed back to his table, writing his prescription with one hand and presenting the big, juicy Mushroom to Little Mac with the other. "I-a have just the thing! This Mushroom will add some incredible height to you and make you taller than ever! No one will ever make fun of you for your height no more!"

"Awesome!" Little Mac exclaimed as he leaned forward and grabbed the prescription and the Mushroom. He crumpled up the former and threw it into a garbage can with several pink, glittery filters on it, and was just about to scarf down the Mushroom when he remembered his manners. "Thanks a bunch, Doctor Mario," he sighed with genuine gratefulness as he smiled at the doctor, who looked immensely pleased with himself. "I guess the moral here is that you should give drugs to depressed people and all their problems will go away, huh?"

"Of course!" Doctor Mario agreed readily, flushed with success as he patted Little Mac on the shoulder. "Especially shrooms! Shrooms make-a anybody feel good!"

"I couldn't agree more," Little Mac said cheerfully as he stood up. "Well, gotta go – thanks for all your help, Doc!" And without a second turn he was running out of there, leaving the esteemed Doctor Mario to shake his head with a satisfied smile as he began to unbutton his coat, finally ready to spend the rest of the day as regular ol' Mario.


	3. Large Mac 3

"I am so glad that Falcon is banned from the West Wing right now," Toon Link glowered as he bit into crispy fry with a particularly vicious bite.

"Why's that?" Yoshi asked, wrapping his tongue around his entire burger and scarfing it down in one gulp.

"He ruined our million-dollar card castle," Lucas scowled as he played moodily with his ketchup-stained fork. "Five hours of hard work and precise movements thrown out the window because that idiot man-child couldn't keep his car under control."

Ness and Yoshi shot furtive glances at each other before quickly looking away, the former sneaking a secret smile and the latter repressing a guilty shudder.

"Well – well, they paid you each your million bucks anyway, right? Times three?" Yoshi said in an effort to sound optimistic. "So you guys got even more money than you could have gotten, anyway!"

"It's the principle that matters more than the money," Toon Link sighed as he popped the last of the fries into his mouth. "I mean, yeah, sure, we got our three million bucks, but it doesn't feel so great when we were literally two cards away from finishing the biggest card castle Nintendo ever could have had if it just wasn't for that doucheturd."

"Speak for yourself," Vill smiled as he counted the wads of fresh bills that had taken a huge chunk off of both Falcon's and Samus's Smash Bank account. "This money is the only thing sparing Falcon's face from the blade of Vill's axe." He giggled as he placed the wads down, took out the aforementioned weapon, and began polishing its edge.

This time it was Ness's turn to shudder as he imagined the wrath he would have incurred should his three clueless friends, especially Vill, find out the true identity of the person who had crashed the Blue Falcon through the walls of the mansion. He was just about to hastily change the subject when a voice behind him said, "'Sup, losers?"

The four youngsters and single dinosaur turned. Gazing down haughtily at their seated forms was Little Mac – except he wasn't so little anymore. Much to their surprise – and indeed, everyone else in LittleMacDonalds – the boxer seemed to have actually grown some, and the increase in height brought with it a proportional increase in the girth of his muscles as well. The sight of it was so surprising that Yoshi couldn't help but blurt out, "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Mac, you retard," Not-So-Little Mac huffed as he straightened his back and rose to his full height. "Surprised? You shouldn't be. I told you – I told you I'll become bigger than all of you!" And to cap off what he thought would be an unbearable taunt, Not-So-Little Mac drew an imaginary horizontal line from the top of his head to indicate just how tall he had grown.

"How'd you do it?" Lucas asked.

"Like I'm ever going to tell any one of you brats," Not-So-Little Mac said aggressively, keeping his eyes trained on Ness, who expressed no interest whatsoever in this brand new piece of information that Mac was now flaunting before them.

"Did it hurt?" Toon Link asked.

"Yeah, but I manned through it in the end," Not-So-Little Mac replied in a voice deeper than usual. The truth was that all he felt was a little rush of heat the moment the Mushroom slid down his esophagus. He continued to stare at Ness, willing the infuriating brat to look up from his apparently-extremely-captivating fries and acknowledge his presence.

"Vill knows what you did," Vill giggled. "You've taken steroids, haven't you? They're pretty common in the black market right now."

"No drugs were used in the growth of this beautiful new body," Not-So-Little Mac retorted impatiently as he tried to goad Ness into speaking with one final glare, which Ness fully ignored as he scooped up the remaining pile of fries into his mouth. Then, finally unable to stand it any longer, he shot to him, "Well, Ness? I'm bigger now. Not such a small laptop anymore, am I?"

Ness took all the time in the world answering, scooping a dribble of ketchup with his fork and sucking it along with the fries he already had in his mouth. He chewed, slowly, thoughtfully, little blobs of ketchup oozing forth from the corners of his lips as his eyes spent excruciating amounts of time on the ceiling, walls, even the floor – but going nowhere near Mac. Finally, with a big quaff of his Poka-Pola, he gulped everything down, and turned slowly to Not-So-Little Mac.

"Yeah, you're bigger," he said, ending the remark, not with the decisive affirmation Not-So-Little Mac oh-so wanted to hear, but with a tentative, hesitant pause. He took another sip of his drink, and then, quite suddenly, flashed another one of his devious grins. "But you're not as tall as Peach."

He pointed behind where they were sitting, indicating to the princess, who was enjoying a fast food lunch along with Zelda and Wiiliam. Not-So-Little Mac's jaw dropped as Yoshi stood up, exclaiming, "Hey, yeah, Ness's right!" He used his hand to compare his height with Little Mac's, and noting that they were nearly the same, furthered, "I'm shorter than Peach, so if you're only about as big as I am, then that means you're still smaller than her –"

Not-So-Little Mac felt his confidence drain away. He tried to find his tongue, but the widening smirk on Ness's face caused the muscles that pushed syllables from his lips to falter and stutter. Then, the rage from earlier today slowly returning, he managed to spit out, "Yeah, well – well – all of you are smaller than her too –"

"We're barely teenagers, Macky baby," Ness simpered. "Toony here's the oldest, at fourteen. How old are you again? Seventeen, eighteen?" He shook his head. "Pathetic, to think that a near-grown man is still smaller than a woman."

"I – I –" The alpha complex was struggling to come up with a suitable comeback as the smiles and giggles began to infect the other members of Ness's gang. Not-So-Little Mac, who was starting to look not-so-not-so-little, stood dumbly before all. Then he suddenly turned tail and hollered, "Stay where you are! I'll be back!" and scrambled out of the restaurant.

"What a yutz," Ness smiled to himself amongst the chortles of his friend as he finished his drink and threw it behind him. After following a perfect trajectory, it landed in a garbage can with several pink, glittery filters on it.

* * *

"Oh boo hoo hoo hoo!" Not-So-Not-So-Little Mac screamed into his boxing gloves, which he used to cover his apparently-crying face. "I'm still too little and too depressed, Doctor Mario! Oh, whatever shall we do?!"

"A-more Mushrooms!" Doctor Mario cried, scribbling his prescription with one hand and taking out yet another Mushroom with the other.

* * *

"Still smaller than Samus," Ness smirked as he cast one look at Mac after he returned four minutes later.

* * *

"I still feel like garbage," Bigger-Than-Usual Mac echoed.

"A-More Mushrooms!"

* * *

"Think Captain Falcon's an inch or two taller."

* * *

"I'm still sleep…" Unsatisfied-Kinda-Tall Mac interrupted himself with a yawn before falling facedown onto Doctor Mario's desk in feigned sleep.

"A-Even more Mushrooms!"

* * *

"Pretty sure you've got nothing on Rosalina."

* * *

"Life is still bleak and helpless as ever, Doctor Mario," Getting-A-Bit-Too-Big-For-His-Boxing-Shorts Mac groaned in a voice now deeper than Ganondorf's.

"Take some more ster – I mean, a-Mushrooms!"

* * *

"Ganondorf's easily a head or two taller."

* * *

"Me is eating not enough," Larger-Than-Before-Mac groaned as he cradled his tummy.

"Still depressed? It's-a OK – just a few more-a Mushrooms and you'll be right cured!"

* * *

"Bowser."

* * *

He had done it. Finally – after what must have been two hours of rushing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, _he had done it_. He announced the big premiere of his brand new body with a quaking smash of his foot on the floor. Heads turned and jaws dropped as Large Mac rumbled into the restaurant, now so large that he was forced to stoop his hulking figure to keep his head from grinding against the ceiling. He looked almost as intimidating as his Giga form as he towered over the tiny bodies of Ness, Yoshi, Lucas, Toon Link, and Vill, all of whom shrank away in fear as they looked up, horrified, at the mutated giant before them – with the exception of Ness, that is, who continued to frown at his poker cards even as a shadow passed over him.

"NESS!" Large Mac roared, shaking dust from the ceiling. "ME IS BIGGER THAN EVERYONE NOW! ME SO BIG, ME IS BIGGEST SMASHER!" His eyes bulged from his sockets and his veins popped from the flesh of his face as he saw that Ness was still looking down at his cards. Roaring again, Large Mac slammed his fist down on the table, instantly smashing it into two and causing an uproarious fountain of cards and plastic cutlery and empty cartons to fly everywhere. Vill, Lucas, and Toon Link screamed in terror and ran away while Yoshi ducked under his arms, but Ness simply put down his cards irritably and looked up at Mac.

"You're pretty large now, you're right about that," Ness began.

"DAS RIGHT! ME IS LARGE! ME NO MORE LITTLE MAC!" Large Mac screamed triumphantly.

"But…" Ness said, and yet another smile began to stretch forth his cheeks.

"Ness, s-stop it," Yoshi murmured, glaring at his friend.

"…You're still not exactly the biggest thing in this Smash Mansion," Ness finished, ignoring his friend as smile curved upwards even more.

"WOTTT?!" Large Mac screamed. "WHO DAT? WHO STILL BIGGER THAN LARGE MAC?"

"Not _who_ , Macky baby… It's a _what_."

" _Ness_!" Yoshi pleaded again.

"DEN WHAT! WHAT IS BIGGER THAN ME RIGHT NOW!"

"It's…" Ness paused dramatically, drinking, as though it was chocolate milk, the enraged frustration as Large Mac, gnashing his teeth and breathing in huffs of hot air, glared impatiently for the answer. Yoshi leapt forward to try and slap a hand over his friend's mouth but it was too late.

" _The Smash Mansion_."

Ness wrenched Yoshi's hand off of him and leaned back on his chair, gazing triumphantly up as he let the words sink into Mac's brain, which had failed to increase in proportion to his body size. The hulking boxer seethed as his neurons made the relevant connections: He, Large Mac, was in the Smash Mansion. Therefore he, Large Mac, must be smaller than the Smash Mansion. His quest to become the biggest of them all was still incomplete. In complete frustration he threw his head back and let out a bloodcurdling roar, causing the lights of the restaurant to blow out and inciting further screams from the few patrons who had yet to evacuate, before turning tail and smashing his way out of the ruined LittleMacDonalds.

For an entire minute there was nothing but silence.

"Ness," Yoshi finally quivered, casting a fierce glare to his friend, who was the only one without any expression of fear twisting the muscles of his face, " _what have you done_?"

"Ah, relax, Yosh," Ness replied cheerfully as he began gathering the scattered cards. "There's no way that Macky baby can ever get as big as the Smash Mansion. He's probably already hit his limit by now – I'm just messing with him, like I always do."

"That's _not_ the _point_ ," Yoshi snarled, jabbing a finger into Ness's chest and causing him to drop a few of the cards. "Don't you understand that Mac's doing all these harmful drugs because you keep on making fun of him? You need to learn when to stop, for crying out loud!"

"It's just a _joke_ , Yoshi. Geez," Ness said back as he bent down to pick up his cards again. "It's his fault, anyway, for taking things too seriously. And why does he need to feel like he needs to keep on getting big, anyway? Like seriously, what's he trying to prove?"

"That, my boys," came a familiar voice behind them, "can be attributed to _insecurity_."

Ness and Yoshi turned instantly, recognizing the speaker before they could even see him. " _Captain Falcon_?!"

"Yes!" the blue racer cried triumphantly, striking a super-manly sexy pose as he acknowledged his name.

"Aren't you supposed to be banned from the West Wing?" Yoshi frowned.

"Who's keeping tabs on me? Anyway." He brought his hand down on each of the young Smasher's shoulder and began to explain in his mature, wisdom-filled tone, "what you have to understand, boys, is that when athletes like Little Mac begin taking steroids, they just can't stop. To them, it's never enough to simply put on some muscles and tone their bodies – their insecurities force them to want to become bigger than anyone else in the planet, and with multitudinous opportunities to guzzle down those deliciously-addictive drugs within their grasps, that becomes all the more possible. See a guy in the gym with bigger biceps than you? Time to take steroids. Jealous of all those bodybuilders barely twice your size? Steroid time, baby." Captain Falcon shook his head in condescending sympathy. "They're not like me, boys. Everything you see here is all natural, no steroids or protein involved." He struck a side chest pose that almost seemed to severely endanger the ripping of his suit, and swooned, "Ooh la-la!"

"But Vill told us you're currently the biggest demand for steroids in the black market," Ness said.

"Yeah – well –" Captain Falcon began to stutter, sweating buckets as he stood, naked and guilty, before the embarrassing light of his lie. He looked desperately around for a way to escape, and found it in the television near the upper corner of the restaurant.

He pointed at the screen, which was still on even when the lights were out, and cried, "Hey, look, Stand-Up Smash's on!"

Stand-Up Smash, as its name implied, was the weekly comedy show where stand-up comedians from around the universe of Nintendo gathered on a stage to make people laugh their heads off for the hour they had. The show was broadcast live from within the Smash Mansion itself, taking place in one of the many theaters open to the public the Western Wing housed. Ness, Yoshi, and Captain Falcon looked up to the screen as they listened to the announcer begin the custom introduction.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another spectacular evening of Stand-Up Smash! Today we're proud to present to you a very special guest star. Coming all the way from Bronx, New York, fresh off from his career of training promising new talents to fight in the boxing ring! Please wellllllccccccome the brand new up-and-coming star comedian – DOOOOOOOOOC LOUIS!"

"Doc Louis?!" the trio cried in disbelief, and their eyes widened even further as they watched the former heavyweight boxer lumber onto the stage with a wide grin and a wave of his hand to the cheering audience, some of whom were already on their feet to greet the near-celebrity with enthusiastic applause.

"Thank you!" Doc Louis shouted over the noise as he grabbed the mike from its stand. "Thank you!" he cried again, this time into the mike when the cheers and claps showed no signs of abating. He said this for a total of about four or five times, waiting for the noise to die out as he comfortably walked miniscule distances within the center of the stage. When die out it finally did, Doc Louis began:

"Well, I'm sure y'all are wonderin' what the hell I'm doing in the center of this stage instead of on the sides of the boxing ring."

He waited, almost methodically, to let the small waves of nods and "mm hmms" ripple through the crowd and course its natural death, before continuing, "Well, let me tell you, coachin' my Macky baby makes me feel more like a tech employee at a Smapple Genius Bar than a boxing coach. I mean, what do you expect? He's a goddamn Little Mac – _smallest laptop in the world, baby_!"

The crowd loved it. They screamed with mirth, shook with delight, an amalgamation of movement and noise that seemed to rumble the entire theater with its infectious joy. Certainly it worked on Falcon; even through the medium of broadcasted electromagnetic waves, the blue-suited racer joined in on the laughter, leaning his left arm against Ness's chair as he remarked jovially, "Man! That Doc Louis – who would have thought he could be this funny?"

It was a different story with Ness and Yoshi. The dinosaur turned quickly to the PK child, and felt a queasy sense of dread sink into him as he looked at the locked jaws of a disbelieving Ness, his boyish fists hammed into tight curls.

"Yeah, yeah, y'all laughin' now," Doc Louis was chuckling, joining in the festivities that his own joke had brought about, "but let me tell you, sometimes people would talk to me about my Macky baby and I'd say –" here his rumbling voice took a slight increase in frequency, mimicking that adopted by someone in the customer service of a professional industry "– oh, Little Mac's got the usual specifications, y'know, a display of about four-eight, weighs about one-oh-seven pounds – comes with a 2.5 GigaMac dual-core processing unit, memory's not so great – and (switching back to his regular voice) they'd just look at me and be like, 'The fuck is this crazy black man talkin' about?' And I'd look at them and be like, 'Oh, you meant the human Little Mac! My _student_!'"

Again with the giggles and the chortles. Yoshi put a hand on Ness's shoulder in an effort to stop his trembling; Ness swatted it away.

"And if makin' me feel like I'm some Genius ain't enough – I'm not, that's why I'm a coach (more laughter) – that little baby's gotta go and make me feel _hungry_! You know sometimes, I'm lookin' over him, and I'm watchin' him do his shit, y'know, doin' his push-ups, doin' his sit-ups – and I'm lookin' at him, and I'm thinking, 'Goddamn, I could use a Little Mac 'n' cheese right now.'"

For the third time the crowd became an erupting volcano of laughs, spewing lava of thundering guffaws and shrieks that seemed to boil Ness to the peak of his temper.

"Son of a bitch," he whispered, voice shaking along with the quakes of his body.

"Ness –" Yoshi started, as Ness pushed back his chair with a brutal momentum that sent it crashing to the floor.

"That son of a bitch is stealing my jokes," he seethed, turning to Yoshi and pointing with an arrow of a finger at the screen, which was sporting a close-up of Doc Louis's face. " _My jokes_!"

"Ah, come on now, Ness, you shouldn't steal credit for somebody's own creation," Captain Falcon chided cheerfully, wiping a tear from the triangular sheen of his eyes from within his visor.

" _His_ creation?!" Ness sputtered, the rose of his cheeks burning ovals into his skin at the injustice of Falcon's words. "What do you mean, _his_ creation?! That was all – I spent hours coming up with those – can't believe he's –"

"Yeah, sometimes he'd be talkin' to me and all I'd be hearing is 'Coach, I taste delicious!' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, yeah I bet you do, you Little Mac 'n' cheese.'"

Ness screamed over the roar of the audience, "I'M GOING TO GET THAT SON OF A CARLOS MENCIA!" Pink, psionic sparkles of uncontainable rage were already manifesting around the perimeter of his fists, and though his legs still sported the young qualities of a boy barely becoming in years to that of an adolescent, he was crushing craters into the floor with each step his feet took, as though he was instead an enraged giant foraging for an outlet of its calamitous tendencies.

"Ness, just forget about it!" Yoshi pleaded as he threw himself in front of Ness's destructive path of violent vengeance. "It's not worth it!"

Ness simply grabbed Yoshi by the flesh of his chest and threw him effortlessly behind him, the wrath of his psychic energy lending wonders of strength to his arm. Yoshi flew so far behind that he crashed against the wall and fell promptly onto a table; by the time he regained his senses and was able to see through the pain, Ness was already gone.

"What the hell is his problem?" was all Captain Falcon could say at the ruins Ness had left behind him: Hugely dented floors, tables cracked into two, a splatter of ketchup dripping from the walls.

"Oh man," Yoshi said weakly as he pushed himself off the table. "Today is not going to be a good day."


	4. Large Mac 4

Bereft of both doctor and patients, the Doctor's Office brooded silently in the confines of its own lonely repose, a quality that could be attributed to its status as the exclusive source of healthcare (boom) in the Smash Mansion. Consequently it was built at the very ground floor of the Western Wing, well below the facilities of recreation that promoted deafening noise and deleterious chaos. If one were to desire a place (BOOM) of absolute tranquility, he or she could not find a better place than the Doctor's Office – provided, of course, that the eponymous doctor himself had outside business and was not in the clinic. Unfortunately, Doctor BOOM Mario always made sure to lock the door before he left, barring any from entering in his absence, so unless one seriously needed a haven of such calm and was willing to risk the infraction of breaking in **BOOM** and trespassing, he or she would forever be unable to indulge in the **_BOOM_** sublimity that was the –

– door of the Doctor's Office was blown right off its frame, along with a sizable chunk of the wall. It blasted off to the right of the room, smashing into magazine racks, upending coffee tables, shredding plush couches. A huge, rock-hard balloon of a green, fisted boxing glove, steaming and trembling among the falling rain of debris, poked its ugly head into the hole where there once was a door. Then it retreated, and in its place appeared the towering figure of Large Mac – face contorted by stupid pugnacity, slabs and chunks of pure muscles rippling and threatening to rip seams in his tautened skin.

"DOCTOR MARIO!" he screamed, causing several of the framed certificates to crash to the floor. "ME STILL NO BIG ENOUGH!"

Silence. In brutish impatience Large Mac unleashed a gargantuan roar and smashed a fist into the wall, ripping holes through several posters and impacting a great circular crater. He moved with his head grinding against the ceiling, inciting a linear rain of plaster to fall and litter the path his feet took him. He kicked aside what furniture was left standing, even downright stepping on some of them: _flat_ went the surfaces as they crashed to the floor, legs collapsing under his weight. When he reached the mahogany, polished desk that Doctor Mario so often sat behind, he screamed again, "DOCTOR MARRRIIIOOO! WHERE IS YOU! MACKY NEED YOU RIGHT NOOOOWW!"

Al he heard was the echo of his roar and the seething pant of his own breathing. Why no Mushroom? Mushroom always come when Macky need the biggie-biggie! Where Mushroom now, where – where Doctor now? Desk nobody, no Doctor! That mean no Mushroom, that mean no biggie-biggie! No biggie-biggie mean no Mansion Mac – and Macky need be Mansion Mac and beat Nessy –

The eternally infuriating grin, the careless ease with which he laughed, the contemptuous indifference that pronounced every syllable his lips bore and thundered in Mac's ears for unendurable hours to come. Large Mac howled and swung his entire right arm in an overhead arc that brought his fist smashing into the desk, demolishing it into chunks of jagged wood and scattered papers and pens. Ploughing his feet right through the crumbles of destruction, Large Mac charged like a bull through the wall behind the desk, where housed several other medical rooms and tools and drugs that Doctor Mario chose not to display in the immediate clinic. He caused quite the bloody rampaging show at the Operating Theater, inflicted extremely intensive damage in the ICU, absolutely boned the X Ray Room, all the way until he was at the very back of the hidden labyrinth of the Doctor's Office which was Doctor's Mario warehouse for surplus drugs and medication, where he toppled shelves, shattered jars, spilled chemicals, crushed pills, sprayed powder, squelched organs, rammed his fists everywhere, into everything, until finally he broke through a particularly high shelf and into his raging roaring mouth fell the emergency supply of Doctor Mario's prized Mega Mushroom.

* * *

"…And, y'know, it wasn't immediately clear to me that Macky baby was American," Doc Louis was saying to the audience (several of whom were wiping tears from their cheeks or clutching their bellies), "Y'know, I look at him, and I look at his size, and I'm thinking, 'Man, this has got to be a Little –'

"STOP!" bellowed a voice from the right side of the stage, and every single head in the theater turned so fast to see the bearer of the voice that for a second the theater reverberated with the collective _cracks_ of popped neck joints. Almost everybody recognized the identity of the boy that marched center stage, noting the classic garb of red cap, striped shirt, and short shorts; roughly half managed to pick up on the expressions of some deep hatred so unfamiliarly lining the boy's face; and exactly one had a sudden transformation of countenance, changing from that of jovial humor to sheer terror, and that one person was none other than the up-and-rising star Doc Louis himself.

"Ness!" Doc Louis gasped, immediately losing his cool as his glands erupted boiling beads of sweat from every pore of his body. He flustered for what to say, lips moving continuously but not making a single sound. Then, with quite an unfitting rasp that contrasted starkly with the deep confidence with which he had delivered his jokes, he cried, "Se – security!"

A smile cracked the lines and furrows of pernicious intent that marked Ness's face, and he said icily, "Oh, they've already been taken care of." He gestured behind him with a jerky motion of his thumb, and Doc Louis saw the unconscious bodies of the Security Miis lying still on the sides of the stage that was hidden to the audience. He gulped. Former heavyweight champion he might be, but he knew he was no match for a regularly-Smashing kid with psychic powers beyond anything he had ever seen before.

He suddenly remembered he was still in the middle of a performance, and gave a wobbly smile as he improvised, shakily, "Well – well, I never thought he'd be comin', but looks like my biggest fan Nessy baby is here to – to ask for my autograph! Everyone, give a big hand for –"

"Can it," Ness snarled, and with a flick of a finger he shot the mike into Doc Louis's mouth, amplifying a guttered choking sound that rang across the theater. While Doc struggled to pull the instrument out of the depths of his windpipe, Ness pulled out his own mike and asked in a dangerously loaded tone, "So, Doc Louis. Why don't you tell everyone here where you got such marvelous jokes from?"

The audience remained deathly silent as Doc Louis finally succeeded in pulling the microphone from his mouth.

"Where – where they're from?" he gasped, after a few deep intakes of breath. "Why – why such a silly question? From – from my head, of course – everything from the good ol' noggin in between my ears –"

" _Is that so_?"

It was at this moment, registering the stuck-up, haughty, belligerent stance and tone that Ness was adopting towards him, that all fear, all anticipation, all worries that had channeled through his body like an electric surge of malaise suddenly turned to that of defiance, of pride, of actual anger. This boy here was no different from his boxing rivals of old – the aggressive and the arrogant, the old timers and the young bloods, the gum chewers and the tattooers, and all had the same locked jaw, the same narrowed eyes, the same condescending conceit. All of that meant nothing in the isolated square of the boxing ring. So what if he was an established and esteemed Smasher who had been duking it out for seventeen years? He might look scary now, but if the boy was all bark and no bite, then there was nothing – absolutely nothing – he could do to ruin his cherished dreams of becoming a comic super star.

Doc Louis cleared his throat, straightened his back, and said, more confidently this time, "Yeah, that is so. You got a problem with that, little boy?"

"Don't call me _little_ ," Ness snapped. "So you say you came up with these jokes yourself? _I see_." He nodded with such heavy exaggeration that not even the people way back could miss the painfully slow motion with which his head bobbed up and down, up and down. "Well, pardon my manners, but looks like I so _rudely_ interrupted when you were telling one of your oh-so original jokes!" Ness snapped his fingers, summoned a stool from somewhere back stage, and sat in stiffly comfortable manner. "Oh, do forgive me. Please, finish what you were saying – what _did_ you think Little Mac was, if not an American?"

He pressed a palm into the knuckles of his left hand, emitting a barrage of loud pops.

"Well, if you really must know, _little_ boy –"

" _I said don't call me little_!" Ness interrupted again furiously; Doc Louis ignored him and continued, "I didn't think my Macky baby was from this great country, because it seemed to me he was more of a –"

"– _Little_ _Mac_ edonian," they both said in unison, and Doc Louis didn't even flinch as Ness clasped the sides of his face with his hands and gasped, before saying, in mocking surprise, "Oh, _wow_! For some reason I just so _happened_ to know the answer to the joke that _you_ came up with!" He brought a finger to his chin and pondered, " _Hmmmmmmm_! Now I wonder how that could possibly be? You got an answer to that, Louis?"

"Crazy coincidence, maybe. Lucky guess," Doc Louis spat back, completely unfazed as he returned Ness's glare.

" _Could be_ ," Ness retorted nastily. "Well, why don't you lay another one of your jokes, then, eh, Louis? See how lucky I'll be _this_ time!"

"Sure thing." Doc Louis paused, scrunching up his face slightly as he wracked his mind as quickly as possible for a joke that did not concern Little Mac, but came up with nothing. It was hard to believe that amongst the constant stream of scrawls filling every white spot on the hundred-odd pages of his jokebook there wasn't at least one joke that had nothing to do with his student, and for the briefest moment Doc Louis felt a pang of guilt… But, no no, you can't let your emotions get in the way of your fight. Look what that got Mike Tyson, a bloody ear in his mouth.

He released the muscles of his face and started reciting the next joke that was supposed to follow the one prior.

"Well, my Little Macedonian, he had a girlfriend in the 90's, a Spanish one at that. Beautiful name of –"

" _Little_ _Mac_ arena," they said, again in unison, and with this dual harmony of answers Ness leaned back slightly and crossed his arms over his chest, smiling triumphantly as he sneered, "Still a crazy coincidence, huh Doc Louis?"

"Maybe you're reading my mind," Doc Louis said, jabbing an accusing finger in Ness's direction as inspiration suddenly struck. "We all know you got some crazy voodoo powers bangin' around in your skull somewhere. What's to stop you from looking into my mind and stealin' my jokes, huh? That whatchoo looking to do? Steal my jokes, steal my career for yourself?"

"The only one stealing here," Ness roared, finally losing his patience as he jumped off from his stool, "is YOU! _You_ stole all my Little Mac jokes after asking for them, _you_ took all the credit for something that I spent days to write and perfect! _I'm_ practically the scriptwriter of this entire fucking show here!"

"Don't you dare lie, little boy!" Doc Louis shouted, matching his voice in decibels to that of Ness. "I was the one who came up with all these brilliant jokes! I'm funnier than you'll ever be!"

"A sack of potatoes could tell a better joke than you! I came up with the Little Mac jokes!"

"No, _I_ did. I'm his coach, for cryin' out loud!"

"Coach smoach, I'm the one who came up with the Little Mac jokes!"

"No, I did!"

"I DID!"

 **"WHO SAY MACKY WITTLE!"**

The last line came out not from Doc Louis, but from way up above. For just after Ness had screamed, face red, "I DID!", there had been a sudden tremor of such alarming magnitude that the entire ground quaked beneath everyone's feet, and some members of the audience were even knocked off their seat. Screams, yelps, and a couple of scurries towards the rear exit for those closest, but other than that the audience was mostly silent and still as all looked above. The great domed ceiling of the theater was being torn away, and before they knew it the dim atmosphere was suddenly eradicated by the flooding of early evening light – before that itself was eradicated by the looming shadow of a face so large that only a small area of the mouth was barely visible through the hole which the ceiling once covered.

It shouted again, **"WHO SAY ME WITTLE! WHO!"** , and everyone in their right minds – which was to say, all the audience – raised their hands over their heads, screamed at the top of their lungs, and made a mad dash for the exits, stampeding and no doubt trampling over one another along the way. Ness and Doc Louis, however, were both stricken by the petrification of fear as they watched the engorged lips of someone they were well familiar with, their only movements being a slow, trembling rise of an arm and finger, both of which pointed directly at the other.

The mouth gave way to a satellite dish eye, which became an even bigger satellite dish as it widened, popped, red veins bulging and pupils dilating as it said, **"ME KNOW YOU! YOU IS NEST! NESTY SAY ME WITTLE!"**

And before Ness could even let out the tiniest whimper, an open green boxing glove, about the size of two stories of a building, completely obliterated the wall and curled around the body of Ness, smashing Doc Louis away and leaving only Ness's head exposed above the leathery cage of a fist.

Eyelids and mouth flapping wildly in the accelerating ascent at which he was bodily propelled, Ness, ever the wisecrack, assessed his current situation for some witty words that would make light of the whole predicament, and finally found one in the elongation of a single, two-lettered word:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

* * *

"Thanks again for doing this, Mario," Samus said gratefully as she watched Mario dismantle some pipes from below the sink of her room's bathroom. "Don't know what the problem is, but it just refused to drain when I got up this morning."

"It's-a no problem," Mario replied as he grabbed a wrench and began working at a bolt of a curved section. "It's-a just a bit of a clog, so it's-a easy to fix. Woo hoo!"

"Well, that's great." Samus leaned her right shoulder against the side of her bathroom door, and, quite seemingly randomly, asked, "By the way, am I correct in assuming Yoshi's favorite pie is blueberry pie?"

"A-yes, he does love the blueberry," Mario gruffed, voice slightly echoey as his voice traveled through the interior of a pipe. He turned to Samus, tilted his head slightly, and said, "A-why do you ask?"

"Oh… Just wondering," was Samus's simple reply, along with a slight curve to the left of her mouth. Before Mario could question any further, there was the heart attack-inducing clap of a monstrous sound, followed promptly by what looked like a giant leg passing over Samus's bathroom window, throwing the interior into darkness and causing Samus to blurt out, as she ran over to get a better look, "What the hell is _that_?"

She opened the window, turned her head up, and saw the lower body of some very familiar-looking giant scale the part of the mansion above her.

"Mario," she called, after finally finding her voice. "Mario, you – you might wanna look at this –"

She looked back inside, and it was to find that the plumber was nowhere in sight.

She sighed.

"Gone super already, it seems," she muttered as she shut the window.


	5. Large Mac 5

Atop the highest steeple of the Smash Mansion, Ness dangled precariously, blowing with the violent wind that such tumultuous altitudes tend to conjure, teeth grinding like jagged stones in the hardening bed of his gums as he weathered the frostbite of an evil winter midday. Towering above him was Not-Quite-As-Big-As-The-Smash-Mansion-But-Certainly-So-Prodigiously-And-Overwhelmingly-Huge-That-The-Physical-Repercussion-Of-Such-Monstrous-Size-Is-Bleeding-In-A-Metaphorical-Fashion-That-Severely-Undermines-The-Pacing-Of-This-FanFictional-Tale-By-Creating-Such-A-Ponderous-And-Arguably-Highly-Unnecessary-Epithet-But-Anyway-The-Point-Is-That-He's-Supremely-Dupremely-Colossal Mac, whose entire lower body was equal in length of the entire steeple. Presently he was looking up the skies and swiveling his head in a semicircular arc, blasting the sonic booms from the flaps of his vocal cords and disintegrating the clouds into wisps of ephemeral nothingness.

Through the deafening noise of bestial victory, Ness mustered the courage and the voice to yell out, "Mac! Maaaaac!" He took a deep breath. "Not-Quite-As-Big-As-The-Smash-Mansion-But-Certainly-So-Prodigiously-And-Overwhelmingly-Huge-That-The-Physical-Repercussion-Of-Such-Monstrous-Size-Is-Bleeding-In-A-Metaphorical-Fashion-That-Severely-Undermines-The-Pacing-Of-This-FanFictional-Tale-By-Creating-Such-A-Ponderous-And-Arguably-Highly-Unnecessary-Epithet-But-Anyway-The-Point-Is-That-He's-Supremely-Dupremely-Colossal Mac! (another deep breath) If you've had your fun, can you let me down already? I'm freezing my butt off over here!"

He meant the last line literally, for Not-Quite-As-Big-As-The-Smash-Mansion-But-Certainly-So-Prodigiously-And-Overwhelmingly-Huge-That-The-Physical-Repercussion-Of-Such-Monstrous-Size-Is-Bleeding-In-A-Metaphorical-Fashion-That-Severely-Undermines-The-Pacing-Of-This-FanFictional-Tale-By-Creating-Such-A-Ponderous-And-Arguably-Highly-Unnecessary-Epithet-But-Anyway-The-Point-Is-That-He's-Supremely-Dupremely-Colossal Mac had hung him on the steeple by the seat of his pants, exposing his naked bottom to the aforementioned chilly winds. The oversized boxer, of course, could not hear him, and simply proceeded to repeatedly pound his fists against his chest, one fist after the other, channeling the spirit of another overgrown primate. Ness looked up hopelessly at the display of overused cinematic allusions before looking directly into the plane of your computer screen and shaking his head. "I don't see the point of that," he sighed. "It would have made way more sense if you did it with Donkey Kong. Couldn't you have saved the gratuitous movie reference for a different plot that starred him, instead? Why waste it on Macky baby here?"

Quite suddenly, a different voice boomed out of nowhere, interrupting Ness's rant and Mac's pointless roars. "MAAAAC!" it shouted, and Ness turned to the source of it, recognizing the voice immediately. Master Hand, in a furious state of a tightened fist, flew through the air directly towards Mac's face, a blazing circle of superheated air blowing over his knuckles from the sheer velocity. "What the shit are you doing on my mansion?! Get off, this instant! Off, I tell you!"

If Ness was but an ant in comparison to Not-Quite-As-Big-As-The-Smash-Mansion-But-Certainly-So-Prodigiously-And-Overwhelmingly-Huge-That-The-Physical-Repercussion-Of-Such-Monstrous-Size-Is-Bleeding-In-A-Metaphorical-Fashion-That-Severely-Undermines-The-Pacing-Of-This-FanFictional-Tale-By-Creating-Such-A-Ponderous-And-Arguably-Highly-Unnecessary-Epithet-But-Anyway-The-Point-Is-That-He's-Supremely-Dupremely-Colossal Mac, then Master Hand was just a dinky mouse. Mac looked down at Master Hand as though he was a mosquito that he had been trying to swat for the past ten minutes, and plummeted his fist down, down, down straight towards the flying fist. The two collided in a spectacular explosion of heat and sound, the smoothness of green against the ridges of white fingers, and both vibrated intensely for a full two seconds, at a standstill for dominance and progress in ascent or descent. Two seconds later, and a fist finally gave way, receding back almost instantly as the other barged through relentlessly, until Mac's muscles overcame even the power of controlled flight and sent Master Hand blasting off through the skies like a rebellious firework that had refused to go off and was still going up, up, up, up, up… Until it was gone, a split-second sparkle in the sky, the evanescent grave of one who had chosen to be buried in the clouds.

"Holy crap!" Ness cried. "You just blasted off Master Hand by three Event Matches! Now he won't appear until _Captain Falcon Saves the Day!_ "

Once again, Mac failed to hear Ness's puny voice of tiny insignificance, and continued his routine of using his chest as a one-note drum.

"Listen to me when I'm talking to you, Little Mac!" Ness roared.

It was strange. The amplitude of his voice had not increased at all in this vent of frustration, and yet, for the first time since he had hung him on the steeple, Mac heard Ness loud and clear, as though Ness had acquired a megaphone with which to speak to him. Mac immediately stopped pounding his chest, immediately halted all pointless yelling, immediately shifted a gaze of primal rage towards the prey he had impaled upon the shaft, and screamed, **"WOTT YOU SAY?!"**

"I – um – I –" The courage and the voice had all but died out, and Ness's shout became a sputtering mess of syllables and half-formed words. "I – j-j-just – well, I was h-hoping you could –"

 **"ME NO LITTLE!"** Mac screamed, bringing his face mere inches from Ness, and the proximity of the sound waves would have ripped Ness's flesh off of his bones had this not been a relatively mild-on-the-gore story. Instead, Ness's body shook like there was no tomorrow, kept only in place by the point of his pants, while Ness squeezed his eyes shut and cowered with his arms to his face. **"ME IS NOT-KITE-BOOG-SMASH-MANSION-SOOP-DOOP MAC! ME BIGGER THAN SMASH MANSION!"**

Neither of those two statements held much truth, but Ness wasn't about to correct him on that, and remained silent in agreement. Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac continued his tirade with a few more blistering screams, before turning to Ness with an extremely blocky, toothy grin. **"NOW ME TEACH YOU A LESSON,"** he glowered, and, with a slow pull of his right arm, brought it straight up above Ness, like a giant wrecking ball just about to snap from its cord and engage its crushing plummet to the heads below. Ness's eyes could only widen in ineffable horror as Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac's smile became wider, became even more manic than ever. **"ME POUND YOU SO SMALL, YOU BECOME LITTLE! LIKE LITTLE MAC 'N' CHEESE!"**

The last thing Ness could remember seeing was a great gargantuan green sun of a fist, before he closed his eyes and let the typical life-flashing-before-your-eyes thingy take place.

* * *

Needless to say, the spectacle of what was essentially a monster climbing up the Smash Mansion had garnered quite a crowd, and almost every single Smasher had gathered outside the mansion to get a better look at what was going on.

"He – He's got Ness!" Lucas had screamed, pointing to the tiny speck that could barely be seen poking out of Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac's fist when he was scaling the building.

"Holy shit! Master Hand just got owned by a single punch!" Falco had exclaimed, and the crowd celebrated briefly with cheers and applause.

"HE'S GOING TO KILL HIM!" Peach had screamed hysterically as Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac was raising up his fist, and everyone let out collective gasps of horror, with some even covering their eyes and shrieking in despair.

And now, after heart-stopping seconds of unbearable agony in which things seemed truly helpless, Yoshi, always the observant one, cried, "Look! Up in the sky!"

Everyone looked to the direction that Yoshi's finger was pointing. A kind of unidentifiable flying object was zipping through the sky, aiming straight for the mismatched duo with no signs of slowing or stopping.

"It's a bird!" Pit gasped.

"It's a plane!" Falco declared.

"It's – it's –!" Yoshi was about to scream in utter excitement and exhilaration, when he squinted his eyes and saw what it actually was. "Oh. It's just Mario."

Everyone let out a collective groan, and some Smashers even began to disperse from the crowd, shaking their heads and snarling nasty words to make their disappointment known.

"I was really hoping it'd be a bird, too," Pit muttered as he folded his crestfallen wings and walked back into the mansion.

* * *

Back up above, Super Mario made his gallant entry: "It's-a me, _Suuuuuuuuuper_ Mario!" He could only imagine the endless streams and gushes of adulation and adoration from the Smashers below. He was tempted to give a small wave of his right hand, a special treat for the fans, an indicative gesture of appreciation for all the support they had shown for his heroic deeds – but thought better of it as he kept his arms straight ahead. A hero must be stoic, silent, independent of the public perception – such had been the way of this comparatively small, but no less significant faction of his life, the part that dealt with the doers of evil, the bringers of destruction, and stopped them from tearing apart the moral threads that bound peace to stability in the Smash Mansion.

All this he must do in the guise of an identity withheld from every living soul, for no one, absolutely no one, could know that he, Mario, was actually in fact Super Mario, for the sake of the aforementioned peace and stability of not just the Smash Mansion, but his own wellbeing. It was hard, juggling three different secret identities in a manner that would not arouse any suspicion, but his meticulousness had allowed him to prevail in –

"Mario!" Doc Louis was shouting from an open window. "Whatever you do, don't hurt him!"

"I am not-a Mario," Super Mario hurriedly corrected, a single drop of sweat excreting from his right temple as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I am-a _Super_ Mario! Ma – Mario is just a plumber, and I am a super hero!"

He pulled the back of his Cape to emphasize the difference.

Doc Louis rolled his eyes, having completely forgotten about Mario's unique… Tendencies, and with an irritated sigh, shouted, "Alright, Super Mario – just listen! Macky baby's only seventeen years old! If you hurt him, you'll be hurting a minor – and we all know _that's_ never funny!"

Super Mario shook his head in agreement and, with a voice that sounded like it could come from R.O.B., repeated, "Child abuse is a-never funny."

"Exactly! So you listen up, Mario –"

" _Super_ Mario!"

" _Whatever_! Point is, you've gotta find a way to stop Macky without hurting him! You got that, Super Mario?"

Super Mario nodded solemnly as he focused his gaze on that fat green fist, his parallel arms raised with stiff pride, as he, with a heroic expression of unstoppable determination, muttered, "No worries, Louis. I got it all under control… All under control."

* * *

It was the end of his life as he knew it. Ness could only wait for the finishing blow to his skull, the flattening fist that would expel all life out of him as he became a pancaked shell of his former existence. There was nothing he could do about it, and so Ness waited, waited for that punch of doom. Any second now. Any second now… Any second now… Any… Second…

Ness peeped an eye open.

Flying high and mighty above him, Cape fluttering madly with the winds, was Super Mario, a single outstretched arm all that remained to block the apocalyptic fist from its crushing descent. Once again, it was fist against fist as Super Mario, teeth gritted, sweat bustling, eyebrows furrowing, lifted what was a weight of Atlas proportions with a single punch. For a breathtaking moment it seemed as though Super Mario had finally proven his worth for something, and Ness even got his hopes for that singular moment of hope. Then –

– the green fist ploughed through, Super Mario was knocked away, and the entire tower where which Ness hung was blown to smithereens and debris, sending him on his painful (but not fatal, no one died in Smash Bros.) fall.

"You're the most useless super hero _ever_ , Mario!" Ness shouted before he got lost in the falling chunks of stone and wood.

" _Super_ Mario!" Super Mario corrected in a disgruntled series of high-and-low pitches as he performed several somersaults in the air. He steadied himself, shook his head, and took a good look at the destruction that he had just let happen. The tallest tower of the Western Wing was now almost completely demolished at its highest stories, and Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac stood among the clouds of dust, laughing, **"NOW YOU UNDERSTAND! NOW YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MACKY FEEL LIKE! BWAHAHAHAHA! BWAHAHAHAHAR!"**

Super Mario rubbed his chin as he observed the catastrophe from his current distance. Ness, he was sure, was fine – a few injuries aside, he would have landed safely somewhere in the lower floor, with the worst possible scenario being that he was crushed under some huge chunk of tower – but that was nothing new in the chaotic world of Smash. His utmost priority, at the moment, would be to stop Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac from destroying any more of the mansion and causing any further casualties… But how? Their literal sizable difference prevented him from challenging Mac head-on…

"He's a-too big," Super Mario muttered to himself as he slowly flew to the side, surveying the scene of Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac doing another one of his pointless roars again. "If-a I could just-a make him _smaller_ …"

And with that materialized a light bulb above Super Mario's head, shining bright with the genius of a fresh idea. "I've-a got it!" Super Mario cried, and without wasting another second he turned once, twice, thrice in the air, before zooming down with the same determined look, same determined pose, same determined Cape fluttering like a symbol of hope and justice for all.

At that instant, Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac was still pounding away at the building, crushing floors and demolishing walls as he tried to find, through a barrage of pure power, Ness, who had disappeared after his initial punch. The devastation of his search only made visibility worse, however, and Mac continued to bellow in frustration as dust clouds surrounded his fist and specks flew into his eyes. He lifted his left arm, ready to deliver another massive blow in the hopes that Ness would appear before him, when he heard a familiar voice shout: " _Wait, Macky baby_!"

As though possessing a magical quality to it that forced all to obey its command, Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac's fist stopped instantaneously. He narrowed his eyes as he made out the identity of the form steadily materializing through the cloud before him: Doc Louis, wheezing, gripping his knees as he bent forward, struggling to catch his breath through the flurry of dust and exhaustion of what must have been a vertical marathon. He sputtered some incomprehensible words, choked, and, as the dust finally settled, managed to rasp, "Macky baby! You've gotta stop!" He breathed deeply through his nostrils, and continued, "I'm – I'm sorry 'bout – 'bout bein' a terrible coach! I – I laughed at you when you were down, son! It's all my fault you're like this!" Doc Louis stopped to wipe a single tear from his eye. "But whatever you're doin' – it's not the answer! If you're still in there – you gotta snap out of it, Macky baby! _Please_!"

Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac stood, petrified, not budging an inch as he gazed down at the lone man who had dared to stand in the path of his punches, and recognition seemed to flicker in his eyes. Doc Louis held his breath as Mac lowered the sky-high arm, leather loosening as the fists inside unfolded to palms. When the arm was finally hanging loosely over his sides, Doc Louis broke into a touched smile, and, wiping another tear from his eye, said, "That's my –"

 _SPLAT_! Mac promptly squished Doc Louis under his foot; when he lifted it, Doc Louis was stuck to the black soles, flatter than ironed flatbread and possessing the same dimensions as paper, as though someone had made a giant, realistic paper cut-out of him and had proudly tacked it onto the sole of Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac's shoes. "I thought I told you you ain't a kickboxer!" Doc Louis groaned as the wind peeled him from the shoe and sent him fluttering like a plastic bag through the skies.

 **"ME NO BABY!"** Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac yelled after his drifting coach. **"ME IS NOT-KITE-BOOG-SMASH-MANSION-SOOP-DOOP MAC! ME IS BIGGER THAN SMASH MANSION!"**

"Actually, Mac," Super Mario said as he flew up from the bottom of nowhere, now hoisting a bulging sack of white with a red medical plus sign over his right shoulder, "I a-think you are still-a smaller than the Smash Mansion!"

 **"WOTTTT?!"** Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac screamed in disbelief as he bulged his eyes at Super Mario, who only nodded in response. "It's a-true! If you are-a standing on the Mansion, that-a means you are still-a smaller than it! Correct? But wait!" Super Mario said hurriedly, before Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac could express his displeasure with a mad swing at him, "I-a have just what you need!" He flew up even more, such that Mac was forced to bend his neck in order to look at him, opened the sack, and took out from within – "A Mushroom!" he revealed with exaggerated relish, and the reaction was immediate: Mac's pupils constricted, eyes ballooned out, mouth drooled. **"MUSHROOM!"** he screamed, and swiped at Super Mario with an ecstatic arm, further complementing his visceral reflex. **"ME WANT MUSHROOM! GIVE MACKY MUSHROOM RIGHT NOW!"**

"Then," Mario cried as he stuffed the single Mushroom back into the sack and proceeded to turn it over, "Open wide!" And open wide Mac's mouth did, as Mario thrust the entire sack into the black, digestive depths. It bounced against Mac's tongue and grew smaller and smaller as it made its descent into the caves of his esophagus. Mac closed his mouth before the sack could truly disappear in the illusion of infinite distance; when he opened it again, it was to unleash a sonic boom burp, a thunderous "brap-ap-ap" that blew Super Mario at least half a mile away, despite his best efforts to maintain his position.

"Mario! Are you out of your mind?!" Doc Louis cried, still in his flattened, paper state as he drifted tumultuously around Super Mario. "Why'd you just feed Mac more Mushrooms? Do you want to get us all killed?!"

"It's-a _Super_ Mario," Super Mario corrected with a huff. Then his frown turned to a sly, bright smile as he reached forward to stop Doc Louis from his uncontrollable flight. "And-a I didn't feed him Mushrooms. I a-fed him _Poison_ Mushrooms!"

"Poison Mushrooms?" Doc Louis frowned. "What the hell is that?"

Super Mario was just about to reply when there came the low, guttered grumble from yours giant truly.

"Just-a sit back and enjoy the show," he grinned instead, holding Doc Louis such that he was staring, straight ahead, at the source of the noise.

Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac, meanwhile, was bending forward, one arm coiled tightly around the remaining perimeter of the tower, one boxing glove rubbing his stomach in tight circles. He moaned, he groaned, he grumbled; he gasped, retched, and retched again. His legs wobbled dangerously, and for a split instant Super Mario was about to fly forth, ready to at least try to keep the poisoned giant from falling, but Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac steadied himself in the end:

 **"Uuuuuurrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh…. Uuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnggggggghhhhhhhhh… GRRRRROOOOAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH! GRRRROOOOARRRGGGHHHHHHGGGROOOAGGGH! GRRRRRROOOOOOAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH… GRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOaaaaaaaarrrrrgghhhh… Grrrunnnngh! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnngggggggggghhhhh… Gnnnnnuuuuuuuggggggghhhhh… Gnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnuuuuuu** uuuuuuuuugggggggggggghhhh! Gnnnuu… Grruuugghh… Ge… Ge… Uggghh… No… No… S-stop… S-s-stop…! Make it… S-s-stop… make it stop! uckk… unnnghh…. nnnngh! ah… ah…"

So were the death rattles of Not-Quite-As-Big-As-The-Smash-Mansion-But-Certainly-So-Prodigiously-And-Overwhelmingly-Huge-That-The-Physical-Repercussion-Of-Such-Monstrous-Size-Is-Bleeding-In-A-Metaphorical-Fashion-That-Severely-Undermines-The-Pacing-Of-This-FanFictional-Tale-By-Creating-Such-A-Ponderous-And-Arguably-Highly-Unnecessary-Epithet-But-Anyway-The-Point-Is-That-He's-Supremely-Dupremely-Colossal Mac, and then Large Mac, and then Larger-Than-Before Mac, and then Getting-A-Bit-Too-Big-For-His-Boxing-Shorts Mac, and then Unsatisfied-Kinda-Tall Mac, and then Bigger-Than-Usual Mac, and then Not-So-Not-So-Little Mac, and then Little Mac, and then Littler Mac, and then Littlest Mac… And then, finally, Chibi Mac. Just like the growing, the shrinking had been a surprisingly smooth process, although far more unpleasant for Mac: An unending stream of ice cold constantly running down his throat and flowing through every vein, depositing into every organ of his body, and with each eruption of cold came an instantaneous diminish in size.

In other words, Not-Kite-Boog-Smash-Mansion-Soop-Doop Mac shrank cartoonishly until he was Chibi Mac, exactly the same size as Pikachu. What the hell else do you want me to say? The imagery should be familiar enough to you if you've watched a lot of cartoons.

"Nooooooooo!" Chibi Mac screamed in a voice that sounded as though he had inhaled truckloads of helium. He fell through the air, no longer tall enough for his feet to find ground on the ledge provided by the architecture of the building. In his panic to stop his sudden fall he sent his arms up in a mad flurry, attempting to grab something, anything… But there was no need to worry: Barely five seconds after he had entered free fall, it was immediately broken by the outstretched arms of the waiting hero, stooping in for the save before Mac's day could get any wilder than it already was.

"Mario?!" he squeaked after one look at the face of his savior.

"It's-a _Super_ Mario! Woo hoo!" came the umpteenth correction, as Super Mario, now with an additional cape of Doc Louis to join the cursory Cape Feather, flew a circle around the destruction zone, and finally proceeded to lower himself, in a standing, upright stance, down to the waiting crowds below.

* * *

Just as Super Mario's feet touched ground, so too did Ness scramble out from the door of the Western Wing, and the Smashers gathered around the four principle instigators of today's plot to barrage them with incessant screams and indistinguishable questions.

"Mac, what the hell _happened_ to you?!"

"Holy shit! He's _tiny_!"

"Wow, Mario, you actually did something right for once."

"Ness! You OK bud? Are you hurt?"

"Look, Doc Louis finally lost some weight."

" _He's fucking_ tine-ee!"

"Everyone, everyone! Please!" Super Mario cried, holding up both hands in a call for silence. The noise failed to die completely, but the volume decreased considerably enough for Super Mario to give a satisfied smile. He unwrapped Doc Louis from his neck and gave him a good quick airing to revert him back to his glorious three dimensions. Then he cleared his throat and said out loud, "Alright, everybody, it's-a all over! No need to worry about-a Mac or Ness or Doc Louis – we can all-a go back with our lives now –"

"No we can't!" came an enraged, appalled voice directly next to him, and Super Mario turned in surprise. Next to him, making sure his best friend Ness was alright with a fierce, unrestrained hug, was Yoshi, who, one hand still resting gently on Ness's shoulder, stood up straight to say, "You can't just dismiss everyone now, Mario! What kind of a hero are you? Don't you get there's something important we need to talk about here?"

"It's-a _Super_ Mario, Yoshi! Suuuuuuuuppper!"

"Yeah, yeah, calm down, Franky," Yoshi retorted with a roll of his eyes. "Are you guys seriously telling me none of you know what the moral of today is?"

"That being big is the only way to wreck people?" Chibi Mac squeaked.

"To not steal other people's jokes and try and pass it off as your own original content?" Ness snarled as he glared at Doc Louis.

"That people will do anything, including coming up with the most ridiculous lies, to kill your career?" Doc Louis snapped back.

"To give-a drugs to depressed people?" Super Mario tried.

"No, no, no, and no," Yoshi sighed. It was tough, being the voice of reason. Tough and downright infuriating. "Listen up, guys. I know talk about bullying and how it's bad and why we need to stop it are a dime a dozen these days, but… You know, they're a dime a dozen for a reason." He brought a fist down onto an open palm and continued, "We don't know, or understand, just how much our actions, and even the simplest words we say, can hurt others. Oh sure, it might be fun to – to punch someone in the stomach –" Yoshi punched Ness in the stomach, causing the latter to double over and gasp, "Oof!" – "or to call someone 'tubby' –" Yoshi looked directly at Doc Louis while puffing up his cheeks, bending his arms in 'C' shapes on his sides, and wiggling his shoulders; Doc Louis said, "Who you calling tubby?!" – "or to insist that he's Mario even when he doesn't like being called that –" "that-a is because I am not-a Mario!" – "it's fun, to do all those – for _you_. But for the other person? You're making him feel miserable and you're getting a kick out of _that_? You know what other people enjoy making other people miserable? Sociopaths. Is that what you want to be? A sociopath?" Yoshi shook his head, before kneeling down to address Chibi Mac at his level. "I – I'm really sorry Mac. About earlier this morning. I – I should have known when to stop, and I should have stopped Ness before – well, yeah." Yoshi swallowed, and then his voice hardened. "At the same time, it's not right, either, to – you know, lash out as you did. That doesn't make you any better than them, right?" Yoshi gave a small little smile as Chibi Mac looked at him with eyes welling up in tears, before proceeding to stand up and address the crowd at large. "I guess what I'm trying to say is – anyone who comes from a background with tons of bullying will know just how much your life can suck as a result of that one person. And ask yourself this – do you want to be that one person? Do you want to be remembered, for the rest of your life, as that one guy who ruined a good part of somebody's life? Wouldn't you rather go down in memory as someone who shared the joy, and made other people laugh, at no expense of anyone else's misery?

"We all have the propensity to be both a good Samaritan and a total asshole to those around us. And I hope, for the collective good of all, that we all choose to be the former."

When he finally stopped talking, there was silence, at first, with nary a movement in the crowd. Then came a single, isolated clap, joined quickly by a succession of others, until finally he was being lauded by a healthy smatter of applauses and cheers. Super Mario was crying, sniffing and occasionally blubbering into an arm he pressed over his eyes; Ness quickly approached Chibi Mac and stammered, "I – I'm really sorry, dude. I – I guess I took things too far, huh?" Doc Louis, too, was quick to apologize to Mac, failing to keep the emotion out of his voice as he expressed his deepest regrets for betraying him. After finally collecting himself, Super Mario announced that a fresh batch of Mushrooms would be coming in next week, meaning that Chibi Mac wouldn't have to wait long before he became Little Mac again.

"Good. I miss being little, if I'm being honest," Chibi Mac squeaked.

"Me too, Macky baby," Doc Louis gruffed as he rumpled Chibi Mac's hair. "Me, too."

"Stop that!" Chibi Mac squeaked again, this time pitched with high anger as he brushed away his coach's hand. "Just because I'm Chibi doesn't mean I'm some _pet_!"

"Sorry," Doc Louis said immediately as he retracted his hand. "Hope I wasn't bullyin' you there, eh Mac?"

"That was a good speech, man," Ness said to Yoshi as the two began to walk off into a beautiful sunset. "I can't believe I was doing all that nasty stuff to Mac. I feel horrible."

"Good!" Yoshi remarked cheerfully. "You feeling horrible is the first step to making a change for the better. And besides – I know the perfect thing that'll cheer you right up."

"What is it?"

"Ice cream!" Yoshi answered happily, and the two trekked side by side over the curvature of the path, their silhouettes growing smaller and smaller until they rounded a corner and were gone.


	6. Large Mac 6

Just another busy day at LittleMacDonalds. Chibi Mac was desperately trying to grab his earplugs from the drawer, eyes bulging, teeth gnashing, face boiling red. In front of him, leaning on the counter, was Ness, who was saying:

"You know what's the name of the brand for undergarments that babies wear? _Chibi Mac_! Cuz he's a _tiny boxer_!"

As Chibi Mac lets out a squeak of frustration, Ness looks to the plane of your computer screen, winks, and snickers:

"Don't tell Yoshi. And don't look up to me, either! I'm a terrible role model."

* * *

Previous Event Match: Race to the Finish

Next Event Match: Tongue-Tied Torture Pr0n


End file.
